Yo, La Reina
by Roses of Sharon
Summary: And Susan is - was - Queen, and now she is broken. Susancentric, SusanCaspianish.
1. chapter1

Summary: And Susan is - was - Queen, and now she is broken

The Author Is: thinking of the good old days when she actually updated once in a while. _Oh, I remember that! Wasn't that, like, during the summer? When we slept? _Yeah… sleep, I remember that fondly. And very, very vaguely.

Disclaimer: I do not own _Chronicles of Narnia_.

Summary: And Susan is - was - Queen, and now she is broken. Susancentric, SusanCaspianish.

Yo, La Reina

From the day Susan is crowned in Cair Paravel, she is Queen. Queen, with a capital _Q_, and that is who she is. For Susan, it is not a title, not a crown, not a throne. It is an identity. _I, the Queen_.

Susan lives her life like she is Queen - Queen in hiding, Queen betrayed, Queen dethroned. But she is forever Queen, forever of Narnia. _I am Susan_, she thinks.

_I am Susan, High Queen of Narnia. Once a King or Queen of Narnia, always a King or Queen of Narnia_.

This is truth, to her. This is how it is, how it much bit, for always and ever, and nothing - nothing, ever - can change it. Nothing.

She always believed, and always would, that one day they would return. They would return, and she needed to remember, to learn things against that day. Foreign policy and diplomacy and court dress and manners, things that she would never have learned otherwise, but now soaks in with an intensity she never quite turns to her schoolwork.

But then they return, and then… it is all different. Cair Paravel, and the golden days of Narnia are over, gone and never coming back.

She dies, in that moment. Susan is no longer Queen - not matter what Aslan says. For a Queen banished from the people she loves and who love her is no Queen at all. A Queen who does not fight this should never have been Queen, but she cannot fight Aslan. She cannot fight Aslan, for she is only human, not even Queen.

So that is it, then. She kisses the man who could have been the love of her life, kisses him with the force of all the love she has left, all the love for her people and her land and her country, and she leaves, and does not look back.

Maybe she would never have loved him, but maybe she would have. Maybe they could have had it - could have been glorious and beautiful and epic, could have been the tale of the land.

But now she is Susan, just Susan. There is no crown for her anymore. No crown, no throne, no glittering Cair Paravel. There will be no more bowing courtiers and blushing pages, no more archery or daring jousts. It is all over, and she puts this in that kiss. It is a kiss that says _This is what we could have had, maybe_, and _This is what we're giving up_.

And then she leaves, steps through that not-door and into England.

She dies.

Because Susan is Queen, and the title, to her, is not just a name. It is not just a throne, it is a life. It is - _was _- her life, but now it is not. Now it is over.

The Susan that steps through the door into England is not the Susan who leaves it, and she does not want to be.

The Susan who left believed.

The Susan who came back could not afford to.


	2. chapter2

There is a blank, a hitch before her name when she says it, and this is the first thing you notice about her as she introduces herself to you

The Author Is: very, very tired. She should totally be studying for her AP US History test tomorrow, or maybe the _Scarlet Letter _test, or doing her pre-lab questions for Chemistry, but really. Who does that? Also, this was originally meant to be a one-shot, but then… well… stuff happened, and this is a kind of related but not very plottish drabblieish thing.

Disclaimer: I do not own _Chronicles of Narnia_.

Summary: And Susan is - was - Queen, and now she is broken. Susancentric, SusanCaspianish.

Yo, La Reina

part .2

There is a blank, a hitch before her name when she says it, and this is the first thing you notice about her as she introduces herself to you.

"Susan," she says, and the break before she says her name, as though she was about to say something else and changed her mind, is evident. "Susan Pevensie." She offers her hand to you palm down, turning it at the last moment as though remembering the handshake.

When you take her hand in yours, it is soft and smooth, callused the way only a horsewoman and a lady can be.

"A pleasure," you tell her, and the words seem to stick oddly in your throat. You grip her hand firmly, and pump it twice before releasing it and replacing your hand in your pocket, where you grip the little pocket knife that you never travel without. It feels good in your hand, safe.

She smiles at you, a meaningless smile that somehow fills you with anticipation and warmth despite its emptiness, and she nods and she leaves, words floating over her shoulder towards you.

The words are not empty: they are polite and graceful and detached, and they bite. "Perhaps you could leave the pocket-knife on the curb before you enter," she says.

And then she walks through the gates, pass the security officers with a smile, and walks into the ballroom, her heels clicking and her dress swishing.

She is beautiful, you think, and you almost follow her before her words register and you wince, looking down at the wrist extending from your suit pocket. You remove the knife and place it on the curb, just as she says, before following her through the gate.

The guards stop you and ask for the invitation that you wave in their faces, and ask you to remove your shoes.

You wonder how she does it.

It is as though she is weaving a spell around you, around all of you, you and the security guards and even the men and women and children prancing and parading around the floor. It is as though her smile is a key, and with it she can open any lock, enter through any door.

Once, you had met a Queen - you think she was the Queen of England, and you saw her from very far away. But she was like that, in a way. She sat perfectly straight and tall, and wore beautiful dresses and had beautiful hair, and she smiles, a pale imitation of the smile that… Susan had given you.

You find yourself pausing before you even think her name, as though you recognize the something that she wants to say instead and place it there yourself.

(You have no idea. You don't know that the word she wants to put there is _Queen_, that she is more a Queen then the one you saw once, though your subconscious whispers to you of it.

But you feel it. You feel it in your heart, in your soul; your mind feels the dominance in her, the dominance shadowed by gentleness and submission, a willingness to obey, to live her lie and hide herself.

You do not know, and you probably never will.)

"Susan," they call her. You hear them - everyone calls her. She is popular, as you have never been, though you probably have more money then all of them combined. You suppose it is because you never flaunt it - raking your eyes over her, you think that she is another like you, hiding her true wealth.

And then you look closely, and you _see_. She has no wealth, you think. She has no wealth of her own, except maybe a wealth of pride, a treasury of dignity. But she has no money, no riches. You wonder who she married - if she married, and your respect for her drops several notches.

_Marrying for money_, you sneer inwardly.

You vow to find out who he is - was. For she certainly cannot _still _be married, no, not a woman like her, as free as she is.

For she is free, in a way that you are not, though you have shunned society. She is free in a way that no one else in this room is, no one from the kitchen maids to the hosts.

You are jealous.

(If you knew better, you'd maybe be sorry. But you don't, and you never will, because as much as you try to separate yourself from the people surrounding her… you _are _one of them.)


	3. chapter3

There is a blank, a hitch before her name when she says it, and this is the first thing you notice about her as she introduces herself to you

The Author Is: cold, goshdarnit. What's up with that? Anyways, this is a completely different person. Very, very different.

Disclaimer: I do not own _Chronicles of Narnia_.

Summary: And Susan is - was - Queen, and now she is broken. Susancentric, SusanCaspianish.

Yo, La Reina

part .3

You meet her at a charity ball, when you are fresh home from the war - when sometimes you still wake at night thinking you hear the distant explosions that mean another friend, another companion dead.

The war is not over, not yet, but you are here and safe, in your dress uniform surrounded by bright, gay, twirling belles and black-suited, mustached men. You do not belong here, in this world; you belong on the farm with your mother and your father, you goats and sheep and cows, your little brother and his fiancé - _wife_, you correct yourself.

Almost bitterly, you correct yourself; your little brother, too young to go to war, the one left behind to take care of your aged parents, married to the woman of his dreams.

But you cannot be bitter, not really, because you do not think your brother could have survived the atrocities you have seen (_and committed_, you remind yourself. You stare down at your not-clean hands, flex them almost angrily.)

"Edward!" a voice calls, breaking through your reveries. You are almost grateful as you turn. "Jonathon," you reply.

He beckons you over to him. There is a woman standing by his side, a woman tall and willowy and graceful, with warm brown eyes and a smile on her lips. "Susan," he says, waving a hand in her direction. "Susan," you repeat, and she offers you her hand, palm down.

She seems about to turn it at the last moment, but, in a fit of spontaneity, you take that hand and brush a feather-light kiss across the back of that pristinely white glove, clicking your heels as you have seen your officers - a fine group of dandies, all of them - do.

She is vaguely shocked, you can tell; your friend's eyes are mischievous, laughing. _Eddie, you prude, didn't think you had it in you_. Your smile is aimed at her, but he knows it is meant for him.

Susan has withdrawn her hand; it lies limply at her side for a moment as her eyes flicker wildly to her right. For a moment, you think she is looking at Jon - in a flash, though, you realize that, for a second, she does not see him.

And then she seems to settle back into her own skin, smiling warmly, proudly, gratefully at you and murmuring, "Thank you, soldier. You have the most difficult work to do, of all of us; I wish you well on your journey home."

You settle into a chair scant minutes later, a glass of amber liquid in your hand. You do not belong here, you think, among these peacocks and doves. You do not belong here - you are below them, maybe.

Susan does not belong here, either, but she is somehow above it, as though she is Queen and these are her fawning subjects. But you can see it, you who are not one of them, who are not one of her fine society. You see, vaguely and dimly, the magical web she has woven around them, tying them each to herself.

You see the empty space to her right, always to her right, the space everything she does and says is directed to. Even as she dances, converses, dines, the space on her right, no matter how filled with people, is always empty.

It is empty because something is missing, you decide. You have never been a psychologist, but you think that that is what it means. That she is missing something - some_one_ - that she expects to be there, that she _needs _to be there.

The space is empty, and there is nothing in her motions to show that she expects it not to be. Maybe in her eyes, you think. Maybe in her smile. But you are watching her back, now, watching her as she talks and laughs with others, watching as she walks away from you. And you cannot see her eyes.

But you can feel - you have always been sensitive, always _had _been, before the war. You are happy, a little, to see that that, at least, has not changed. And you can feel, and what you feel is that space, achingly empty, beside her.

You wonder if she will ever truly fill it.

You wonder if she even wants to.


End file.
